Traditionally, companies such as merchants and online sellers or service providers have used “chat systems” to communicate directly and in real time with a customer or prospective customer (“chat user”). For example, a given chat user may need to speak with a company's customer service representative (“chat agent”) regarding a recent purchase of a defective product. The user may log on to the company's website, retrieve the customer service phone number, and call the customer service center. The wait time associated with calling the customer service center is often undesirably long.
As an alternate option in a conventional system, once logging on to the company's website, the user can communicate directly with a customer service representative through a dedicated chat application via the user's computer. Chat systems typically function by enabling users to type and send messages through a chat system to chat agents (i.e., customer service representatives) on the other end of the communication, and vice versa.
Such conventional systems, however, have significant drawbacks. For example, existing chat systems do not integrate with mobile devices (e.g., cellular phones, smartphones, PDAs, etc.) due to the unique limitations and communications interfaces associated with mobile devices. Specifically, most mobile device-based operating systems have limitations in terms of the types of information that can be displayed on a mobile device. Further, many mobile device users do not have web functionality on their mobile device, and thus must use a short messaging system (“SMS”) or other such “text” service to chat with others. Historically, these SMS messages have not been compatible with traditional chat systems as the SMS messages can not be properly routed from a mobile carrier network to a traditional chat platform, and vice versa. Further, the format of traditional SMS messages has not been compatible with legacy chat platforms. Therefore, mobile device users generally have not been able to chat directly via their mobile device with chat agents.
Therefore, there is a long-felt but unresolved need for a chat system that enables a user without access to a traditional desktop or laptop computing device to participate in a chat session and communicate with a chat agent as though the chat session had been initiated on a website through a traditional chat system. Likewise, there is a need for a chat system that allows users to participate in chat sessions while they are “on the go,” e.g., while shopping at a particular establishment. Further, there is a need for a chat system that can effectively route chat messages from a chat application to a user's mobile device, and vice versa.